The coughing of another camper at a distance campsite wakes me up. My eyes, still blurry from sleep, make every effort to focus on the orange nylon fabric of the tent as the sun now shines through it transparent, almost glowing. The tent is hot; I pull the sleeping bag from my shoulders and prop myself up with my elbows behind me. My brother’s sleeping bag is empty and the flap to the tent is half-unzipped. I slide my legs from my own sleeping bag and reach for my sneakers.
Before putting them on I pull the stickers from the laces and tip them up-side-down and shake them in the event that a spider or, god forbid, a snake may have crawled in for warmth in the night.
I unzip the tent’s flap and drop my legs out; the dirt it clouds in the sun’s rays as my sneakers flop down. I stand, appraising the morning; I scratch my side; I yawn; and, I look around for my brother.
The campfire pit smells rich with the earthen tang of burnt pine and ashes. I poke at it with a stick to see if there are any red coals remaining under the ash. I hear a branch snap and look to see my brother playing in the woods several hundred yards from the campsite; it seems that he is a knight with a sword of wood conducting great battle against a great sequoia tree.
A bumble bee hums past me, pausing momentarily at each small, yellow flower in the weeds.
I am eight years old.
The purpose of existence is no further than the comforting moments before me
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